Crap -- uh, craft.

So, rock painting. Is that a thing now? Or is it origami again?

Did Bob Ross ever paint rocks?

These books were all in the wholesale club back-to-school pile, and may be more indicative of what the kids were up to last year than this year. Rock painting is something to do, I guess. I don't recall ever doing it in school. Maybe in New York City they were afraid to let the kids have rocks small enough to throw.

It got me thinking about Craft Projects of My Youth, most of which were connected with elementary school. It's funny how some kids will take to one and not to another, how it's not always the kid you would think who excels at a particular craft. Here are the ones I remember, and my rating (from 0 to 5 yarn balls 🧶). Your mileage will certainly vary. I'd love to hear your take in comments. 

🎨🖌🖇🧶

Paper crafts (corrugated paper edition): Cutting and gluing pictures using sheets of colored corrugated paper. You had to think ahead a little because your cut-out pieces had to have the same direction of corrugation as the background. Otherwise you might have a corrugated man running left-right when he should be up-down, so instead of walking he has to lie down. Lame. Only saved from 0 yarn balls because a classmate accused the school librarian of having corrugated lips, which is still funny. 🧶

Papier-mâché (puppet edition): Very intense exercise in using heavy conical dowels made of cardboard (a.k.a. yarn cones) as puppet bodies and making papier-mâché heads for them. The amount of wet newspaper in that classroom was amazing. The humidity level rose 30%. Later, the heads were painted and decorated with glued-on stuff, and little clothes were made for them. They were all Wizard of Oz themed, because we used the puppets for our class drama that year. I cannot begin to tell you how long we worked on this, but it seemed to be the whole school year. I memorized the entire script even though I had about five lines. As involving crafts go, it was amazing. As for the finished puppet heads, everything looked like blobs. Especially mine. Still: 🧶🧶🧶🧶🧶

Macrame (belt edition): Everyone in class had to have a macrame belt ready for the annual spring class dance at the end of the year. Not a school dance per se; each class had to do some kind of dance number. Our costume required us to make our own macrame belts. I don't want to say that I was bad at it, but a cat would have had a better chance at making a ball of yarn into a belt. In desperation the teacher asked the #1 macrame artist in the class to make my belt -- this little twerp, a jerk who would have been the class bully if he'd not been short, but as it was, was a loudmouth who could piss off anyone. He was a genius at macrame. Who knew? 🧶🧶

Stuff with Popsicle sticks (I have no idea edition): I just know there were tongue depressors and paint and glue. Nothing good ever came out of it. 🧶

Ceramics (painting edition): We got to pick our choice of unpainted ceramics to paint. When I say "our choice" I mean no choice at all, since we went by lottery. I got these little pine trees. Some kids got huge things with an opportunity to do some thoughtful and creative painting. I painted mine green. I am still disappointed, but on the other hand, I had those trees out every Christmas for decades. 🧶🧶 

Tilework (glue edition): We got sheets of little tiles, cut them to shape, and glued them on other things. In theory, pretty cool; in practice, mosaics for morons. 🧶

Pottery (middle school edition): Now we're talking. Using the snake coil method to build up a pot, painting, firing, glazing! Kilns were involved! My pot still came out looking like crap--literal crap, as I painted it brown for some reason, and it was lumpy--but it was tons of fun. I still have it somewhere. It's heavy enough to kill a guy. 🧶🧶🧶🧶🧶

Knitting (adult edition): This actually was team-building project designed by people who did not know anything about knitting, because when you have twenty people knitting a square, even if they knew how to knit, every square is still going to be a different size because of variations among knot sizes, hand sizes, and general ability. Most people did not know how to knit. The dreamed-of goal of having a group crazy quilt was put to bed within the hour. I, of course, could not even make a good snarl. No improvement from my macrame belt fiasco. 0

🎨🖌🖇🧶

That's all I can remember offhand. I am glad we didn't do origami. I think probably some kid would have lost a finger. I don't think our school turned out a lot of geniuses, is what I'm saying.

Old World craftsmanship.

I was looking through the Book of Esther in the Old Testament. Esther is a fascinating book, a story of a narrow brush with destruction for the Jewish people in exile, a history of the origin of the holiday Purim, and a story of how the courage and faithfulness of two normal people can make an enormous difference. It also shows some amazing carpentry work, if you ask me. 

If you're not familiar with the story, here's the setup: King Ahasuerus of Persia gets a new wife (well, a new #1 wife -- he had plenty) named Esther, whom he does not know is one of the many Jews living in the 127 provinces he controls. The king's top man, Haman, just despises the Jews, especially that old Mordecai who hangs around outside the palace. Haman decides he's going to kill all the Jewish people he can get to, and the date is set for a general massacre throughout the kingdom. 

There's a few things Haman doesn't know beyond the fact that the queen is a Jew. He doesn't know, for example, that Mordecai is Esther's cousin and foster father. He also doesn't seem to know that Mordecai saved King Ahasuerus's life by revealing a plot against him -- not that Mordecai ever got rewarded for it. Oy, such ingratitude! 

Haman's skipping along home, knowing that in a few months' time all the Jews in Persia will be massacred. He sees old Mordecai and thinks: I'm happy as a clam, but that guy burns my bacon! If only I could bump him off now! Haman's wife says, well, so what are you waiting for? Just go ahead and have the old man hanged. 

And here's where the carpentry comes in. 

Haman's wife tells him to build a gallows fifty cubits high, and then tomorrow tell his buddy the king he would like to have Mordecai hanged on it for all the world to see. Haman likes this idea fine, and orders the gallows built. So I asked myself, Self, how high is fifty cubits that the palace crew could knock this together overnight?

Merriam-Webster says a cubit is "any of various ancient units of length based on the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger and usually equal to about 18 inches (46 centimeters)". So fifty cubits would be 900 inches, or 75 feet tall! You know how many things in an ancient city were seven stories tall? Maybe none. And yet by morning the staff has whacked the gallows together. 

Say what you will against royalty and the lack of rights for individuals, but they could get things done. In the modern era, Haman couldn't have even gotten the forms to fill out for a building permit as fast as it took these guys to shoot a gallows up. When it came to murder machines, they were raring to go! 

Now, one of the interesting bits about Esther's book is that God isn't not mentioned in it. Some Bible scholars and others dislike the book for that reason. And yet, the providence of God is evident. First, Mordecai and Esther fast in preparation for the dangerous act of asking the king a favor (to please not kill us all!), which shows they know they need God. Second, the king is having trouble sleeping -- maybe because some fools are hammering away on a building project all night long, who knows -- and decides that good, soothing reading would be to have his scribes "bring the book of records of the chronicles" and read to him. Maybe it was so dull that it would put anyone out. But what part do the scribes just happen to read that night? The part where Mordecai saves the king's life. The king realizes he never rewarded the Jewish man. He decides it's time to do something about that. Sounds like the hand of God was pointing to the page to me,

By the time Haman gets to the office the next day he is doomed, but he doesn't know it yet. Mordecai becomes a public hero, Esther makes a request of her husband, and guess who winds up hanging from the gallows? Yep, and for centuries "Haman's gallows" was a term either for a weapon that turns on its wielder or a catastrophic reversal of fortune.

Anyway, I was very impressed by the building skills alluded to in this story. I'm told that the author of the book of Esther may have telescoped events for dramatic effect, but I don't know. I'd prefer to think that those Persian carpenters (International Association of Death Machine Workers, Local شش هفت پنج) just knew how to get things done. You want to hang a guy? Such a gallows they'll build! One night, no waiting!

Latvia #1!

My wife, the master yarn crafter, was watching a video online about Latvian mitten knitting by a woman who had studied the art. 

It would appear that Latvia is especially renowned for its mittens. Who knew?

Well, a lot of people, I guess. Ravelry has a ton of pages devoted to it, and don't even ask about Etsy. And of course there are books, like Lizbeth Upitis's Latvian Mittens: Traditional Designs & Techniques.

As the kiddies would say, It's a THING!

Here are some now!

Of course, that begs the questions: Why mittens? Why Latvia? Why now? 

Flag of Latvia

The CIA World Factbook says that the former Soviet Union republic only has mild winters, and indeed the nation's Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre confesses to an average winter temperature of about 24 degrees Fahrenheit -- not exactly the Arctic freeze one would associate with the need for the world's finest knit mitts. So it's not a matter of cold-weather survival that has made Latvia #1 in mittens. 

Latvian version of the
foam #1 finger
(artist interpretation)

According to Latvians.com, a site dedicated to Latvians and their culture:

Latvia is famous for the fact that the oldest mittens have been found here by archaeologists. They are estimated to be approximately ten centuries old. The tradition of knitting mittens stems from the cold weather of Northern Europe; although it is worth mentioning that centuries ago mittens played a decorative role as well. By fastening them behind the waistband, they were worn in summer as a bijouterie and adornment. For several centuries they were the main form of gift and endowed with magical significance.

Nowadays Latvian mittens, so diverse in their colours and patterns are still an essential part of our winter clothing. Although there is always the possibility to wear synthetic gloves, the originality, tradition, warmth and sense of Latvia that is knitted into a mitten will be always worth a compliment.

But it isn't just the craftsmanship, even the one-upmanship, that might come from knowing your mittens are better than someone else's that make mittens so important in Latvia. There is also a tradition connected to weddings, according to this Latvian site: 

An ancient Latvian wedding tradition says that unmarried girls have to fill up their hope chests before entering the marriage. It’s an old tradition, that was respected by their mothers and grandmothers, so from early childhood girls were taught to knit, embroider, crochet and sew to be able to fulfill their chests with knits and other handicrafts. Knitted mittens were one of the most important things of the chest and also an indicator of girl’s skills. They represented patience and imagination, because every mitten had to be knitted in a different design using different patterns, otherwise the brides were laughed at. The most lavish chests contained several hundred pairs of hand-knitted mittens. This could not have been done if not the rich and diverse Latvian ethnographic culture. Each pair of mittens has its own story, his own unique pattern and what is most important – each pair of mittens holds his own meaning and comes with it its own wish.

As these mittens were given as a gifts, every girl was trying to do their best and was competing among themselves to create as many as possible creative patterns, color compositions and shades.

That seems to have created an atmosphere as brutal and bloody as one of our more crushing competitive events, like the Super Bowl or the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Can you imagine being a bride and getting laughed at on your wedding day because your mittens suck? 

"Ha! Ha! What is on those mittens, Hello Kitty? Are they from the ostruble store?" 

"You should never know the kiss of true love with mittens like that!"

"We laugh at you, bride! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Think of the pressure! As someone who has the manual dexterity of a left-handed ox, I'm glad I was not born a Latvian girl. My wedding would have gotten more laughs than the Depp-Heard trial. 

So it seems that this is just one of those things. It started out to keep warm, and turned somehow into an important cultural statement, like the shtreimel. I've seen ultraorthodox Jewish men wearing those fur hats in the summer on the Sabbath, and if you ask me, when July rolls around, I'd rather have mittens fastened to my waistband than a fur hat on my head. 

Nyetsy.

 

Strangely, Katie's Elephant Cozy knitting business on Etsy
did not take off as well as she had hoped. 

Buttons and bows.

It's Christmas Eve Day! Time to wrap those presents! 

What? You didn't buy them yet?

Well... get some and come on back. I want to show you something.

🕢🕗🕣🕘

My parents left us quite some time ago now, but every Christmas I encounter some of their things that I somehow kept. A bunch of ornaments for the tree, of course, but even some giftwrap supplies. Actually, quite a bit of giftwrap supplies. I swear I have enough curling ribbon to hang every hoarder and wrecker in the average People's Republic. Festively! 

Here's the thing:

The Pixie Bow Maker, proud little gadget of the eighties, is in my possession, along with a supply of the bow pins on which you wrap the ribbon to create the bow. And a fun little item it is, too. 

First, take a pin out of the storage compartment in the base. Lift the center column and put the pin in to hold it on position.

Take a length of festive ribbon and put it festively over the pin. Then make successive loops, passed over that pin, to build the bow.

See? Now we're getting somewhere! When you think you have made enough loops, pop the pin out of the column. Now you not only have a bow, you have a bow with a sharp plastic pin in the center, which you can apply to your gift by shoving into the cardboard. It sits in place beautifully. 

I would not shove it through the plastic bottle of Georgi Vodka you're giving to Otis, or get a large one and shove it through the roof of the Lexus you're giving to your kid, but if you have a gift in a cardboard box, it works like a charm. You can make a large, cheery bow out of any color ribbon you like. Also, you can leave enough ribbon attached to wrap around the box and get the classic ribbon-secured gift without any tape or knots.

The Pixie Bow Maker and pins were a product of Mag-Nif, Inc,. of Mentor, Ohio, as we see on the back of the box. Bloomberg profiles it thus: "Mag-Nif, Inc. manufactures toys and games. The Company offers gift mazes, brain teasers, coin sorters and banks, and pixie craft kits. Mag-Nif operates in the United States." Founded in 1963, according to other data. 

Unfortunately the company seems to have gone out of business, and recently too. They still have a Web site, but all the pages are blank. So that's the end of the Pixie Bow Pins. I think I have enough pins to make about another seventy or so bows. Then, like so many great things about the eighties, the Bow Maker will be no more. 

Sad, but don't be blue. If you are committed to making your own bows for gifts - - and if you were, you wouldn't be the type of person I addressed at the top of this post -- you can find plenty of other products like the Pixie Bow Maker around now. The Pro Bow, for example, supposedly can make all kinds of bows, of all shapes and sizes. Well, good for them. But I'll bet it's not as easy to use as my Pixie Bow Maker.  

Enough of this slog down memory lane! Off you go! You have things to do! Get merry! Get bright! 

We'll be here tomorrow for a quick hit, then back on Saturday for post-Christmas summary. Meanwhile, happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night! 

A year with a knitter.

Summer scenes.

The days are getting so short! The SAD is kicking in! WAH!

Actually I wouldn't mind the days getting a little shorter; the dogs, especially junior dog Nipper, tend to be waking up too early. They're pretty good about it, but when I come rolling out of the bedroom after loafing around until 5:30 a.m., I feel like I've kept them waiting. I certainly don't like waiting when I have to use the can.

On a brighter note, I thought I might share a few visions of summer seen here and there.

I'm really proud of this little guy:

Last year I put in a couple of dahlias. One was to fill a hole, the other to replace a chrysanthemum that didn't survive the winter. I was told that in this climate, dahlia bulbs can only survive if you dig them up and let them slumber in a dirt-filled pot indoors, basically coddling them like children, or starlets. Well, I let nature take its course. One dahlia did go to the big nursery in the sky, but the other one survived and is doing great. Should be considerably bigger and more full of flowers this year.

This is... your guess is as good as mine.

It's the back of a tree house that was built long ago, and this window faces the street. Clearly the kids in the house had some kind of message here for passersby, but I have no idea what they were trying to say. I think I'm being taunted. Well, kids -- and they're probably old enough to have kids of their own now, judging by the look of the place -- you'll have to up your game. I've been taunted much worse than that, and I doubtless will be again.

Here is the most convincing sign that summer is indeed in full swing:

Yes, the first Herrschners Christmas catalog has arrived! My wife's a crafter, and she'll be glad to tell you that you had better be knitting already if you want your homespun presents to be under that tree on December 25. So get to work! Knit at the lake house! Knit at the barbecue! Knit at the ball game! Knit on the beach! There's only 179 days until Christmas!

Finally, here's the sky at 8:37 last night:

I'll take that.

Anyone for tennis?

So our little dog, Nipper, still loves to destroy tennis balls. I mean, annihilate them. We usually get him the Tourna Pressureless Tennis Balls, which are safe for dogs, but his favorite are the Kongs, because they squeak like a dying rat. So much fun.

Often he leaves nothing behind but some bright fuzz and little bits of rubber. But sometimes he can be very neat with the destruction.

Back in the 1990s, when I first worked in children's books, kids were being taught that they could save the earth by recycling, and the best way they could do that was to recycle garbage into arts and crafts projects... projects that they or their parents would turn back into garbage down the line anyway. We did a lot of those books. So I wondered, what could be done with this dead, not-totally-destroyed tennis ball?

First I came up with Deviled Tennis Ball, which is really more of a bad art project than anything else.

My next thought was Tennis Igloos, based on Linus Van Pelt's former struggle to remember to bring eggshells in for the igloo project that his beloved teacher, Miss Othmar, had assigned.

Try as he might, Linus could never remember those eggshells, and she became quite sad. She actually got so frustrated that she quit teaching to get married, although she returned to the strip later.

But I have no teacher, and no interest in doing faux Inuit tableaux.

Ultimately I thought of our pal Stiiv, and that inspired me to make some art in his honor.

Happy Friday, Stiiverino!

Okay, it's trash day, so out this goes.

You knit too much.

If you live with a knitter and you celebrate Christmas, you're probably up to your ankles in yarn by now. If your knitter has not been at it since Labor Day at the latest, take her to the doctor. There must be something wrong.

My wife delights people (including me) every Christmas with handmade presents, knitted or crocheted with loving care. Like a home cook who has progressed beyond the basics, she takes instructions (patterns) and modifies them to her own preferences. Many she makes up on her own.

But I do worry about her knitting, and I'm not kidding when I say she's actually given herself knitting injuries and yarn callouses. Knitting may one day become a safer alternative to football, since people love to watch it but the injuries are less severe. She promises to stand for the national anthem.

She may be drafted by the Washington
Redskeins or the Tennessee Tatting.

Yarn crafters know they are addicted, and they seldom try to hide it. Some celebrate it. Check out Yarn Harlot or Yarn Addict or Mochimochi Land or the Crochet Crowd. They love their addiction. Some make a living from it. They may die in the alley with a skein under each arm, knowing how sad their relatives will be that they took the needle, but they don't care.

And that's why I fret a little.

One day I serenaded the lovely Mrs. Key thus:

You knit too much
You worry me to death
You knit too much
You even knit for my pet

You just knit
Knit too much

You knit for people
That you don't know
You carry your stash
Wherever you go

You just knit
Knit too much

You knitted in the car 
Till they made you stop
Then you knit a holster
For the traffic cop

You just knit
Knit too much

You knit your afghans
More than fifteen feet
You yarn-bombed
East Forty-second Street

You just knit
Knit too much

She didn't approve. She just sneered at me over her flying needles.

I have a feeling I'm gonna get some knitted lumps of coal in my homemade Christmas stocking now.

Hung up.

What do you do with these?

Of course that's a wire hanger, the type one might get from your dry cleaner, or buy in bunches of 200 for whatever reason.

Unlike the legendary Joan Crawford, I have no problems with wire hangers. You have to hang up your shirts on something, and these work fine. But I get too many of them. Like Christmas lights, they tend to tangle up when nobody's looking. Eventually you get this clanging wire clot on the closet pole.

When I lived in the city, the laundry I used to go to had a dry cleaner attached and they welcomed the return of your hangers. But the dry cleaners around here don't want your old skanky hangers, even if they gave you the hanger in the first place.

They're not wanted for the town's recycling collection, although knowing how bad my neighbors are at following recycling directions, I suppose they do it anyway.

No one seems to need wire hangers for television antennae anymore, thank heavens.

Back in the 90's it became a big thing to turn trash into treasure! by reusing, reducing, and recycling in schools -- mainly by using garbage for craft projects. I never thought much of that, as -- let's face it -- it was just postponing the inevitable. Most kids' craft projects wind up in the trash anyway. Although in a way everything is postponing something inevitable, so I'd rather not dwell on that too long.

The one craft project with wire hangers that was awesome can't really be done anymore. Back when Mobil, the gasoline giant, had a line of plastic consumer products, Baggies (which is still a live trademark, my drug-addled friends, so always cap Baggies in formal writing) were somewhat different than they now are. Baggies were originally invented by the Spotless Plastics Corporation in the 50's; when I got to know them they were still commonly found in supermarkets, but not so much now. They were thin plastic bags that closed with twist-ties rather than a zip top, and they had a slightly rough exterior, like alligator scales. Now they are a smooth plastic, but they still use a cartoon alligator for their mascot. And they're owned by Reynolds, sold under their Hefty label.

What a lot of us did back then was bend the hanger into a circle and tie gallon-size Baggies to it, dozens of them, which made a fluffy plastic wreath with its own hook. You could decorate them with ornaments, spray paint them green, or otherwise Christmas them up. It was a fun project and they lasted for years.

Unfortunately you can't even do that now. Since Reynolds made the plastic smooth instead of rough, they don't look right on the hanger. They don't seem to fluff out properly. What were you thinking, Reynolds? Geez.

So now I don't know what to do with wire hangers, except hang a few shirts, straighten some out to get things that can't be reached or as backscratchers, stuff like that. Every now and then I have to ball some up so they don't poke holes in the bags and get them in the trash.

What do you do with YOUR old hangers?

Dog decor.

It happens to parents, and it happens to dog owners: That moment when you realize you're never going to have a clean house again. 

"We should vacuum in here today," I muttered yesterday morning, looking at the carpet in the family room, which is covered in a thick coating of dog hair, combined with some grass clipping and bits from dog biscuits. That statement, "We should vacuum in here today," sounded very familiar, and it struck me that my wife had said those exact words two days ago, and we had vacuumed, and here we were again. 

In fact, "We should vacuum in here today" may have become the most common statement of more than two words in our house. In fact, I suggested my wife consider making a sampler with that theme for the empty back wall. 

We probably could sell the pattern.

Raw death fish, anyone?

When I was a kid, if you offered to feed someone raw fish, they might offer to punch you in the nose. There'd probably be loud discussions about trichinosis and liver flukes or some other such things as well. The was no raw food movement. Civilized people knew how to make fire. Raw was for wild animals and wild people; the last decent person to survive on raw food on purpose was John the Baptist.

But by the time I was in college everyone was sucking down sushi as fast as they could get it. It was the 80's, when Japan was about to take over the world, and I guess we were preemptively surrendering the culture, starting with karaoke and sushi. That was before we knew about Japanese game shows, hikikomori, adult adoption, capsule hotels, and anime schoolgirls with the oversize chestal endowments of fully grown Vegas showgirls, and got to wondering whether atomic bomb fallout made people insane decades after the fact.

Anyway, despite the omnipresence of sushi in New York, I've managed to get this far in life without eating any. I'm not a big fish lover---many Americans aren't; there's probably more fish animosity here per capita than in any other country---but I will go for unchallenging fish like cod or tuna if it's cooked.

My wife, sushi fan that she is, thought she ought to break me in.

Yep, knitted me a sushi. Seaweed-wrapped, she said. Sprayed it with a ginger air freshener to make it more authentic.Very cute.

Well, I can't say for sure if I'd like the real thing yet, but this one tasted pretty good.

If you live with a yarn crafter...

Maybe it was a shroud.